PULSAR: Lost Colony

The ultimate plight of the “SOCIAL GAMER” is that we have to get friends to buy in on games. You’ll always have your Lethal Companies and Phasmaphobias, sure, and there will always be space for exceptional party games like King in the Castle. What about those of us who want a *narrative* experience, where we all feel like we’re working towards a goal together? Sea of Thieves? Yea, but some of my friends don’t find the game compelling enough in the moment to moment gameplay. Okay. Borderlands? Good pick, but those games can be slogs sometimes and the addictive gameplay loop isn’t for everyone. Fair enough. MMO’s like FF14 or GW2? YEAH, LOL. Good luck getting them to grind those out. OKAY FINE, Stardew Valley! ….. We all want to romance Abigail. Unbelievable. Pulsar: Lost Colony fits the bill. Do you have four friends and $20.00? Then Pulsar is absolutely the game for you. You and your four friends each pick 1 of 5 roles on a ship. The Captain does most of the ship interaction and has passives that apply buffs to the rest of the team, basically the Jack of All Trades. The Military Officer gets violent once diplomacy fails and consistently tries to pull you away to play a game of Liar’s Dice. The Scientist heals and also researches techs/Skills. The Engineer makes sure the ship doesn’t explode the moment you warp. The Pilot pilots. You’ll pick a ship which will be aligned with one of the 4 major factions: The Colonial Union is your typical UN Space Empire in decline. WD Weapons Manufacturer: New upstarts who are using their advanced tech to slowly eat away at the Colonial Union while simultaneously fighting off a virus turning their people into zombies. Fluffy Biscuit Company: Biscuits, uhhh??? Alliance of Redditors: Space Pirates. The ships vary in size and stats, and the ship you choose will be the ship that you use throughout your run. Your objective is to find the four clues that will lead to the “Lost Colony”, a now fabled planet that disappeared long ago, hiding away many secrets and possibly treasures. Explore space, follow quest threads, try out the activities like the arena or the races, and upgrade your ship. We completed our first run in about 16 hours, and felt that we, simultaneously, saw quite a bit of the game, and still had much more to explore. Flying through space was incredibly engaging, I think the only thing I have an issue with is that ground combat is a bit meh, and the art style just doesn’t gel with me, which is a personal preference of course. Pick it up, threaten every ship along the way, destroy the galaxy and make your friends complicit in all of it. 4 / 5. Also, for the record, Liar’s Dice is like fun for a single game, idk why my friends want to play it on every jump.

I had high hopes for this game, but it really didn’t meet my expectations. Even playing with a friend, I found it mostly boring. The combat system and other mechanics just aren’t for me. Sadly, I can't recommend it – at least not for solo or duo play. Maybe it’s your thing, but it’s definitely not mine.

Fun coop game if you bring 4 friends! Keep in mind that this is pretty niche and not a AAA game. For a group of 5 who like games that allow you to control a larger vessel together this is a must-play (think barotrauma but in space and 3D, minus the many items, crafting stuff and mod-support) Positive: The coop is engaging for every role and a lot of weird and funny experiences can happen. We haven't seen a lot of mid and endgame but are eager to explore as long as progression doesn't get stale or grindy. Early game feels rewarding and fair (unless you make an upsi and get insta-ripped by a sector boss) Ships and roles have a lot of customization and upgrade paths. We have yet to encounter technical issues! Netcode is fine, connection stable. Almost no bugs and no crashes :) Mediocre: The story exists, it might be good, but presentation lacks. Controls and in-person/FPS fighting might be boring to some, enemies and AI rarely surprise. Negative: The negative reviews are not wrong though, some parts feel a little bit unfinished, the UI is unpolished but mostly works. Some POIs and planets are empty and uninspired or meaningless. In rare situations performance tanks hard (say goodbye to FPS in mine fields with upgraded pilot HUD) Hoping to find a public party/lobby is hopeless, I can't recommend playing with AI. From a devs perspective: Dependency to .net 3.5? DudeWTF it's 2025

I want to love this so much, but it just feels so painfully unfinished. The first few hours there seems like so much content but I just feel like there's no reason to interact with a lot of the mechanics on a more detailed level, because there isn't enough reward/tension caused by interacting with them.

I really enjoyed this game, there were just a few problems I had. YOU NEED 5 PEOPLE, the bots are really bad, our weapons specialist had to leave early so we replaced him with a bot and the bot immediately launched our nuke at a beacon, GIANT waste of a nuke. It takes a long time to learn each role which then means it takes even longer to learn all the roles which is the best thing to do. I found that my friends would get bored very easily because they had nothing to do, the weapons specialist doesn't do anything if theres nothing to shoot at, which if you're playing defensively like we were, is not often. the pilot just has flight sim which can also be boring. so if all of the crew learn all the roles, which takes a while, its best. I played for two long sessions and absolutely loved but I can't convince my friends to play it again because 1. I dont have that many 2. its too much to learn everything and 3. it can be too boring for some of the classes.

Fun Game- Best with friends- Tips from first two play sessions: -There is a tutorial: it is on the starting screen before you start a game. called the academy -Read everything, the manual has a lot of helpful advise in game if you run into questions -At the starting location before you jump anywhere, teleport inside and accept every mission you can! -Also at the starting location, it is a warp gate hub! (think stargate) so the captain can pick a location, the pilot can drive into the stargate and it teleports you much further and faster and spends money instead of fuel! -Accept missing while in route to other locations! they are usually close and frequently fruitful! -Some things like coolant and fuel, it seems that only the captain can buy! -The captain can set spend limits so the crew doesnt blow all the money -Exploring other ships and planets is cool! -Listen to the captain! With so much going on, it is genuinely helpful to have someone in charge -Firing weapons can stop/slow the warp drive from ready-ing -If you can move a ship part to cargo its cause you are full of something like scrap. you can have your weapons person deal with the scrap to empty space for more ship parts -If you are out of warp distance from all locations> save and blind warp. one of the times you'll probably survive Awesome scifi game with classic elements and references to other scifi games and media Huge learning curve at first but once you get the hang of things it really is worth it

When my friends and I first discovered this game, we were quite excited to fly around in space together in VR. Unfortunately, while we did have quite a bit of fun flying a spaceship together, we didn't get the polished experience we were hoping for, as this game has quite a few design issues and a multitude of bugs that really put a damper on our hopes for an exciting sci-fi adventure. We still had a fun time for the most part, and I'd still recommend this game for some people, but it definitely isn't for everyone. The story in this game is neat, with detailed and interesting lore, but it could be presented a lot better. There's no voice acting or even custom animations for talking in this game. Instead, when you talk to an NPC, you're presented with a floating window with text. There's quite a bit of dialog required to progress through the main quests as well, and you're often presented with long paragraphs of text to read through. This is even worse in VR, as text is anchored to the person you're talking to and is fairly small, making it even harder to read. This made it pretty hard to get immersed the story, which was disappointing, because it seemed like a lot of effort went into writing an intriguing narrative. The gameplay is definitely at it's best when you're flying through space yelling at your friends as you try to destroy an enemy ship while dodging fire and trying to keep your own ship from falling apart. The game gives you one of 5 roles to select from (captain, pilot, scientist, weapons expert, or engineer), and each role is better at certain tasks than others, with some stations requiring perks that only certain roles have. This requires you to use quite a bit of teamwork when you're in combat, as there's quite a bit going on and many tasks require information from other places on the ship (for example, the pilot usually can only see directly in front of the ship). For this reason, you'll likely want friends to play it with, or at least other people online, as the AI did not seem very good (although we didn't use it much). It is pretty hard to learn though, with tons of different stations and menus which each have their own function that often isn't explained well. There is a tutorial, but it isn't good, with way to much written information and not nearly enough opportunities to see or practice how certain things will work (with some areas of the tutorial completely locked off if you play the tutorial in VR). Over time you eventually learn how certain things work, especially once you've chosen your role and only focus on your responsibilities, but it still takes quite a while before you feel like you can confidently fly the ship. The gameplay when you're not on your ship is significantly worse. Many of the areas you visit have enormous amounts of empty space and are filled with bland NPCs with little to say. It gets a bit more exciting when you get into combat, but the overheating mechanic means you can rarely shoot more than a handful of times before you're forced to cower and wait for your gun to recharge, which makes combat feel like a chore (the guns on the ship work like this as well, but at least you can switch guns or do other things while they're on cooldown). Enemies also often don't make any sounds, so expect to get hurt or killed unexpectedly by an enemy you didn't see. It slows down even more when you reach a dangerous planet and are forced to don an exosuit, which makes you even slower. Some of the areas we explored on foot were cool, but for the most part this area of the game pales in comparison to the time spent on your ship. This game runs extremely poorly and has an extraordinarily large number of bugs. We encountered dozens of issues, ranging from minor annoyances to game-breaking issues, including: [list] [*] The lights in the ship inexplicably turning on or off. [*] Changing options on some screens affecting other players inexplicably. [*] Enemy information showing up even though they're nowhere close to within range. [*] The dice for Liar's Dice showing up right in front of the camera making them impossible to read. [*] The customization menu appearing miles away when opened. [*] The keyboard randomly appearing on screen. [*] Menus being impossible to use while inside guns, as they seem to be fixed in space and rapidly fly away from you. [*] Characters randomly starting to lose height until the camera is barely above the ground. [*] The output from scanners randomly rotating in space any time you sprint, making it impossible to read or use. [*] Scrap and upgrades in the ship inventory randomly being impossible to interact with. [*] Saving the game not always saving everything consistently (which was an issue particularly in the final fight of the Unseen Threat campaign, where saving would save upgrades, scrap, coolant, health, etc., but would respawn all the enemies that were previously killed). [*] The final boss of the main campaign completely breaking the game if you lose and then load the autosave (sometimes the warp effect would show up on screen and your vision would be doubled, sometimes the boss wouldn't move and it would be impossible to interact with anything, sometimes the boss would fly towards you and instantly destroy your ship, and sometimes it wouldn't even load the boss fight at all). We were forced to reload an earlier save every time we lost. [/list] Although my friends and I managed to get through each of the main campaigns and had a fun time overall, it was rough at times, and you won't have a fun time if you aren't prepared to encounter issues like this sometimes. Note that most of my time playing this game was in VR. I did play on desktop briefly, and I noticed that many of the issues I encountered while in VR didn't occur on desktop, and things generally felt more smooth and less clunky. However, the desktop experience just wasn't the same for me, as the main draw of the game for me was the immersive VR experience of being in space. As such, I still recommend playing this game in VR despite how clunky and buggy it makes the experience, as the feeling of flying through space in VR is worth it. Those that are looking for a simpler, more stable experience (or just don't have VR) will likely want to stick with desktop though. [b]TL;DR[/b] This fun spacefaring RPG allows you to fly a spaceship with your friends and has some fun gameplay and a really neat VR experience, but the story is presented almost exclusively in long paragraphs of text, it has a wicked learning curve, combat when outside of the ship isn't great, many areas are empty and bland, the game runs poorly, and it has an extraordinary amount of bugs, including some game-breaking ones. While my friends and I had fun playing through the game, I'd only recommend this for people looking for a neat space experience to play in VR with friends, and only if you're willing to tolerate a very unpolished experience to get those incredible fleeting moments where you forget that you're not actually flying through space.